Friday, December 26, 2014

Christmas. Ahhh all about the kids! This year was so much fun with the twins. They are getting bigger and a lot of fun to play with. I'm soaking it all up now before they decide they don't like me lol.

Ok lots of pictures! Youngest to oldest opening presents.

We brought my big box on the left (that had my present from Scott in it).

Vincent

He got a hat like Grandpa :)

Emma

She loved her little piano that someone bought her

Ava the blur lol.

Adrian

Trevor

Tony

Melissa

Maegen

Joe

Louie

Michele

Me

Scott

Mom

She liked the little trailer decoration I got her lol

Dad

Charly (Maegen's Dad)

oh and Uncle Bobby came later (Dad's brother)

Biggest hit? The box we brought the presents over in lol. I told Scott next year we'll just give them each an empty box.

I think all the kids were in it at one point or another.

We did a $5 white elephant game with my siblings. I think this shows our sense of humor lol

The naughty Santa we regifted from last year. I taped it to a brick when I wrapped it in a box so no one guessed what it was lol.

After gifts we just hung out for most of the day. I made my lasagna for dinner while we were there since I ran out of time at home.

The boys got electric scooters

For dinner we had prime rib and lasagna. Lots of cookies and pies for dessert. We ended the night by playing Uno until Adrian was begging her parents to take her home so she could go to bed. I guess that's a successful Christmas :)

Oh Christmas morning. I started my morning off by laying in bed emailing with my friends Dee and Carolyn,(we email each other every day, usually several times though out the day. It used to just be while we were at work but now we do it on the weekends too.) snuggling with the animals and listening to Scott and Trevor talking in the living room.

Snookie kind of likes to sleep on my face lol.

The dogs opened their presents (video is taking too long to load) and were super cute. Then onto the family. We got Trevor the new Sylanders game, some science kit things and a DS game.

Melissa got a Chromebook and few a couple little things.

Scott had wrapped my gift in this giant box. I knew where he went shopping and kept thinking "I don't know what the heck he could have bought me from that store that size". I kind of thought maybe he had bought me a sports watch and then just put it in a bigger box.

Which, I was right ;)

I got him a chest strap that he wanted that syncs to his phone. So we kind of got each other similar presents :)

After we opened up our gifts I went out for my run, although not with the Garmin since it had to charge. Then we got dressed and went to my mom's. We actually didn't even leave the house until 11. We used to get up super early and go by 7 or 8. Oh how times have changed lol. I was surprised my brothers didn't call us asking where we were. My mom actually sent me a text when we were leaving asking where we were. For once we were the last ones to show up!

Scott and I went out and finished did the bulk of our Christmas shopping on Friday and Saturday last weekend. Everything else I bought off of Amazon. Next year I am going to try and buy even more off Amazon because, hello! Awesome.

This last week was so busy. I have deadlines approaching at work. Basically if I don't get this work done I ruin the program for everyone. No pressure or anything. Just a slight left eye tick and working full time all week.

With that all my other Christmas and wifely duties have taken a back seat and our house was a wreck, we've been eating junk for dinner all week and all the presents still had to be wrapped. Oh and that annual Christmas cookie baking that Jessica used to take charge of. Guess we should do that too.

So Christmas Eve eve Melissa and I went off to the store for cookie supplies and Christmas Eve we made some cookies. Which, I still have not taken to the neighbors the day after Christmas but at least we made some together for a little cookie making bonding. Trevor even got into the kitchen for a little bit to help cut some out of the rolled sugar cookies.

We had to stop before we were done though because we had plans to go to Scott's parents house at 4. Scott had went and picked up some pizzas from Papa Murphy's. We've started doing pizza the last few years so that his mom doesn't have to do any work (which she can't do now anyways). It's nice and easy and we all like pizza don't we?

We also took cookies and a peanut butter pie.

I didn't really take any pictures at his parents house. I don't think I blogged about it, but his dad fell at the post office right before Thanksgiving. He tripped on a rug and went down. He's been in the hospital 3 times since then. He broke his pelvic bones and tail bone area, his arm and dislocated his finger. THEN his body decided to have gall bladder problems. Poor guy. He turned 86 in the hospital on December 8th.

So anyhow, he's walking with a walker but not without someone walking behind him to make sure he doesn't fall. His mom is also so frail now. She will be 85 in March.

I snuck this picture of Scott cooking pizzas. He was so good cooking them all. It was nice to just sit and hang out. His sister Barbara, who is a Godsend mostly stays there with his parents and helps take care of them. We had a nice time visiting with them all.

After pizza and some dessert his mom climbed into her bed she has set up in the living room and was out like a light and his dad made his way back to his bedroom so it was time to go.

When we got home I wrapped up all the presents and got them under the tree. Amazingly that one roll of wrapping paper I bought wrapped all the presents! That was kind of fun.

Including one for each of the pups :)

Our stockings minus Jessica's :(

I went to bed and cried myself to sleep missing my girl. Do you ever get over that? Hopefully next year she can spend Christmas with us.

Sunday morning I got up at the butt crack of dawn to go run the Double Road Race in Pleasanton. I went over to my old trainer Tanya's house where we were going to meet with one other gal Heather and all go together. I got there and we waited a bit and no Heather. She called her a few times but she wasn't answering so we went without her in Tanya's car.

We were almost to the race when Heather finally picked up and WOKE up haha and amazingly she still made it to the race in time.

Before the race we did the usual bib pick up, take the bag of junk to the car (honestly at this point I'll never need another t shirt) go to the bathroom 12 times, etc.

I got to meet up with my friend Esa who was also running. I met her online on the fit camp group that I used to be really involved in. I borrowed my friend Traci's cute little hat from the night before.

I thought we were just taking a picture here lol

The Double Race is 2 races in one. The first one is a 10k and the 2nd is a 5k. Depending on how long it takes you to do the first one determines how much "down time" you have between the 2 races. Everyone was doing this race but me. I chose to do the new "Christmas Double" that was a 5k to start with and a 3k for the 2nd half (so an 8K total) I had about 1/2 an hour between races. It gave me enough time to get a water, a banana, and to go sit on the corner and watch for the 10k'ers coming in.

This maybe why I like Tanya so much haha. I really miss having her as a trainer.

I ran the 5k in 31:32, which isn't all that fast. I did do a little bit of walking towards the end because I was kind of feeling out of breath. The 2nd half I did in 16:42, also with a bit of walking. I was pushing myself to try and stay under 10 minutes but it was hard! I actually ended up using an inhaler when I got home because my chest was feeling so tight. Not sure what was up with that. Overall I was pretty happy with my runs though. I got 10th place in my age group for the 5k and 6th for the 3k and 12th for my time combined. That's pretty good for a race in this area. I'm also thinking that most of the faster runners ran the larger race so that helped haha.

On the way home we stopped by Panera because they wanted some coffee. I just got a water and a delicious bagel. When I got home I slept on and off for the rest of the day. Such a slacker but it felt good to rest!

Last Saturday night we went to a Christmas dinner down at the club house. Sadly I didn't get any pictures of the kitchen all decorated up (what kind of blogger am I? Sheesh) but it was really pretty! We had planned on sitting next to my friend Traci, since her husband had to work but when we got to the kitchen we were told to sit at a table for 2 because that's what was going to work out. We were kind of bummed and then we got asked to move again to another table with 3 other people so at least we had some other interesting people to talk to besides ourselves. Traci ended up at another table with 3 or so other people so she was fine too and we just hung out after the dinner part was over.

We ended up sitting to this woman who is in her mid 70's and our friend Mic and his girlfriend Trish. The lady, Janice is Mic's older sister. We got to hear a lot of fun stories. They moved her down here from Washington state and she now lives in a retirement community just down the road a bit. It's always fun to meet new people and learn about them.

After dinner we moved over to the bar (it's connected to the kitchen in the club house) for some dancing, drinking and hanging out. The time just flew by and before I knew it it was time to go.